


Promise and a Prayer

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Demonstuck [17]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Demonstuck, Dreams, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, sopor use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 16:49:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14549088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: A quick look at Karkat's previous relationship...specifically, why it ended.





	Promise and a Prayer

Your mouth tastes green. 

Not like grass. Not like apples. No, this is the sick green of stereotypical nuclear waste, alluring and deadly at the same time. It tastes like death and it tastes _so_ fucking good, and you're too fucking disoriented to know whether you should enjoy it or not. 

Instead of thinking about what you did to have that taste on your tongue, you lean into the warm body lying against you and catalogue the input from your other senses. 

The warmth is Gamzee—at least you're going to assume it is. He probably wouldn't ditch you, not when you finally relented and agreed to let him get you high. He's been pushing for that for too long to just take off. There's a smell that your mind instinctively identifies as sex, with a wet red scent under it. Going by the fact that your fingers feel almost sticky, you're going to guess you clawed the shit out of his back. 

Hmph. When you're sober you have enough sense to stay human, keep your fingernails from shifting into claws unless he's fully demon already, but apparently that restraint disappeared last night.Maybe that'll make him think twice about wanting to fuck when both of you are on shit.

Fuck. 

Something in the back of your mind whines in disappointment at that thought, and the green taste in your mouth seems to get stronger. That shit's _addicting._ You'd better not give in to Gamzee's offers again. 

The temptation to think about doing that is already there, and you have to sigh as you push it away and open your eyes. 

All you can see is the wall, which isn't really surprising. Gamzee does tend to end up on the outside of the bed, since he'll shove you right the fuck off if you let him sleep next to the wall; that arrangement's become automatic enough that you'll both conform to it even when neither of you are thinking straight. Either that, or he was a hell of a lot less fucked up than you were. The latter is possible, you guess; he's used to taking this shit, he might have a little more resistance than you. 

Or you're just a lightweight. That's definitely a possibility.

Okay, you need to get up and get this fucking taste out of your mouth before you start thinking about the fainter flavors that make it up. You might still be a little high; your mind's trying to translate them as colors, tiny threads of dark red and drops of white somehow almost blending in with the radioactive green. Coppery and salty. 

Ugh. You probably just bit Gamzee somewhere, but the mental picture that's coming up is that you bit his dick off in the middle of a fucking blowjob. Which _probably_ didn't happen. He wouldn't be so calmly asleep next to you now if you'd done that. 

Get the fuck _up,_ Karkat. 

That's actually easier said than done. Your skinny fuck of a lover has a pretty good grip on you, and even though he's asleep he _still_ tries to hold you tighter when you go to pull away. The best you can manage is squirming around to face him. 

"Gamzee." Fuck, he looks more like you fought him than like you fucked him last night; there's a pattern of bruises and scratches starting on his shoulders and working their way all the way down his bare chest to his hips. If it wasn't for the distinctive marks you've left on his neck, you'd actually be worried, but there's no way you could've left that many hickeys if he hadn't been more-or-less amenable to it. The bite mark on his shoulder explains why your mouth tastes like blood; from the looks of it you were almost completely in your other form when you did it. This is going to take a healing session later to fix it, you think. "Hey. Gamzee, you dumb fuck, wake up. _Hey._." 

"Mmnn..." The sound he makes is a whining complaint, but his lips curve up in a smile as he pulls you down for a kiss. His mouth tastes even more strongly of the green shit than yours does, and he whines again when you pull back. "Kar." 

"Me." You kind of want to resist when he rolls over and pulls you on top of him, but he opens his eyes as he does it and you decide against it. He's barely awake; those violet cat's-eyes can hardly focus on you. "Come on, I want to get up."

"How 'bout you don't do that?" His lazy smile is equal parts endearing and exasperating. "You're a fucking perfect cuddler, bro; stay _here._ With me." 

So fucking tempting, but you dodge the hand that comes up to caress your cheek, and wince with the sudden movement. Seems like you picked up some bruises too. "Come on, Gamzee." 

"You come on." He blinks slowly, going still and limp as he gazes up at you. "I want..." 

You have to bite back a huff when he just trails off instead of finishing, eyes fixed on your face. Watching the red-on-red patterns in your eyes shift, probably. He's _still_ high, isn't he? What did he do, take more after you passed out? 

Stupid. 

(Never mind that alarms are starting to go off in the back of your mind. There's worse things he could be addicted to, and him deferring the crash this way isn't anything new.) 

"Let me get up, and I'll come back in a minute," you tell him, and when you lean down to kiss him again he does, finally, release you. 

You climb off the bed and scowl at your own hands. There's no real reason there should be this much blood on them; you'll have to coax Gamzee into letting you examine him before you lie back down. There's not very much chance that you've injured him badly enough for it to be dangerous—he's a chaos demon, tough enough to recover from almost anything—but he's enough of a dumbass to block pain out, let himself be injured just so you don't insist on healing him. 

You'll heal him anyway. After you clean your hands and drink some water. 

The latter task means the bathroom, which means you get a look at yourself in the mirror. Hm. Not as bad as you expected, really; there's some bruising around your neck, but your torso's barely marked at all, other than faint marks around your waist where he might have not-quite-clawed you. The fact that you don't see any dark lovebites makes you wonder where he put them. You vaguely remember Gamzee laughing, playfully threatening to really use his teeth instead of just sucking at your skin if you didn't quit scratching, so there's probably hickeys somewhere that you can't see right now...

Leave it for later. You're not too much worse for wear, and your hands are clean. 

(But the nonsensical worry is circling behind your thoughts, making you frown and try to brush it off as deja vu as you wipe your hands on a towel and give your reflection one more quick glance.) 

_What's wrong?_

Nothing. Nothing's wrong. 

_Karkat?_

Kitchen. 

Gamzee's still lying on the bed; you ignore his whine as you walk through and push the door to the other room open. The door into the kitchen _won't_ open; what the fuck? You can't even think of anything that would've been in there to get knocked over and jam the door like this—

The muffled alarms in your mind _shriek_ as you shove the door open, and yeah, there's a fucking reason for it. The blood on your hands wasn't from Gamzee. Of course it wasn't. 

Your brother's on the floor, his blood staining the stupid beige linoleum almost black, and you're sure you make some kind of sound but you don't know what, because you can't tell if he's breathing. 

You don't remember this. You don't fucking remember this, which means you probably fucking did it to him—you marked up Gamzee, didn't you? You'd never do that when you were sober, maybe _couldn't_ do that if you were sober—what else could you, would you, _did_ you do? 

_Karkat—_

"Kankri..." The movement isn't that of falling to your knees; no, it's closer to collapsing. Your hands are shaking badly enough that you can't find the pulse point for a moment, and the remnants of the drug in your system are damping your ability to simply _feel_ his pulse. 

There. 

He's not dead. 

You take a shaky breath and carefully roll Kankri into his back, wincing at the bruises on his face, and drag your magic down into your fingertips, pulling at his ripped sweater to expose the darker red of the cuts underneath. 

For the amount of blood, it's not as bad as you thought it'd be. There's deep claw marks across his chest, the kind of thing you only see from a demon or a fucking bear; those take you a few minutes to close. If it weren't for the blood loss and the head injury that you can feel his blood reporting to you, he'd probably be conscious. 

The head injury terrifies you. Your talents are suited to heal the body, not the mind...

_Karkat, listen. Come on, man. This ain't gonna go anywhere you want to look at—_

"Karkat?" Gamzee asks from behind you as you try to concentrate enough to heal the rest of your brother's wounds. "Thought you were coming right back." 

He doesn't sound concerned. Just curious. When you look up at him, there's new traces of green around his lips. 

"What the fuck _happened_?" you ask him, not bothering to hide the scared desperation in the question. You need Gamzee to give you an explanation. Something.

No. You need him to be as fucking confused as you are, tell you that he doesn't know, tell you— 

Gamzee shrugs. "Motherfucker decided to butt in on us last night." His mouth twists in remembered irritation, eyes unfocusing for a moment. "Wouldn't back off when I told him, not even when you told him—just wanted to preach at you and keep us from enjoying your first time on the elixir." He shakes his head slowly, obviously regrounding himself in the present, and grins down at you. "C'mon back to bed, bro. Let this mess be." 

"Gamzee, what the fuck?" 

But you know.

He doesn't care if Kankri's hurt. Gamzee's the one who pulled this shit; the claw marks were closer to what his demon form can inflict than yours, you realize that now. Maybe he meant to kill him in the first place, and you provided a distraction or an obstacle; you can't _remember._

But. 

This is fucking _wrong._

You bite down on your tongue hard enough to taste fresh blood and gather your unconscious brother up in your arms. Gamzee's eyes widen at the very fucking obvious rejection, and you see the beginning of his fury as his eyes flare and he _changes_ —

_KARKAT YOU FUCKING LISTEN TO ME AND COME BACK!_

The almost painfully loud shout snaps you out of reality—no, it doesn't, it shoves you back _into_ reality. Or at least into the present. Into consciousness, out of the dream that you should have expected. It's the fucking anniversary of that relationship ending, after all. 

Of course, you didn't expect it. 

"Fuck, Karkat—I'm sorry, I didn't fucking know it'd go that bad, shoulda woke you, Karkat, listen, I'm here, I swear—Kankri's okay, you didn't hurt him, he's fine—" 

Dave's talking to you even as you snarl deep in your throat and cling to him; he doesn't even pause when your too-long claws dig into his arm, even though you smell his blood almost immediately. You shouldn't be doing this to him, but your mind's still half-in that memory, your body reacting to how you fought Gamzee for the right to leave him. 

_I'm hurting Dave. I'm fucking hurting Dave._

_I'm okay, 'kat,_ he thinks back at you, pushing calmness and love at you as he tries to soothe you down again. "I'm okay. Look at me, Karkat—" 

"Dave—" And you force yourself to wake up just a little more, meet his eyes and say his name again, like it's a fucking prayer. He's already wound loosely around your mind, brushing through gently and hunting for what you need to hear from him, and he murmurs your name like a promise and pulls you up close, rocking you and waiting for you to finish moving out of the memory. 

Which you do. It takes you a minute, but you quiet yourself and you loosen your grip on his arm, sending wisps of your power through his blood to heal the little punctures there before you really move your hand away. 

You can feel the sharper pain that gives him, too. _Fuck._

_Shush, 'kat._ "If I'd known where that fuckin' dream was going, I'd've woke you up at the fucking start and skipped all this shit. Don't beat yourself up over it." 

"I'm still sorry." You're mostly in Dave's lap; you shift off him, pulling him to lie down next to you. The way that he immediately curls against your chest helps you relax, more than anything. _You sure you're okay?_

"Hey, I'm supposed to ask you that." You can hear the laugh in his soft voice, feel it where his mind touches yours. "You never wanna let me help you sort out your nightmares." 

_I don't have as many as you._

"Doesn't mean they're not just as bad." Dave sighs, moves to press a kiss at the corner of your mouth, and waits. 

You could just let him wait. He'd let you. And the part of your life that Gamzee belonged in is over. 

But. 

"How much did you get out of that dream?" 

"Everything you did, I think." Dave shrugs a bit, nestling closer to you and making a soft sound as you tighten your arms around him. "Didn't know it was _you_ , not until the mirror—you know how I lose track of who I am when I end up dreaming with you." 

"Mhm." _So you know how I felt about Gamzee._

"You loved him." 

_...I'm sorry._

"What?" Dave jerks back far enough to meet your eyes at that, brows furrowing as he dips into your mind to figure out what the hell you mean. "...ah. Fuck, man." 

"Dreaming about him now, when it's over, when I have _you,_ is so fucking _stupid._ " You close your eyes as Dave winds his fingers into your hair and gently pulls you closer. "The fact I didn't see how fucked up that whole shitshow was? Stupid. That I couldn't help him deal with his problems, get him less dependant on that shit instead of fucking walking out on him? Stupid—" 

"Karkat. _Karkat._ " Dave says it softly enough that you could easily talk over him, but the sound of your name from his lips quiets you as if he demanded silence. " 's not stupid. None of this is stupid." _Fucked up, yeah, but that's not your fault._ And he presses his forehead against yours, breath warm on your lips, and opens his mind to you. 

Dave can't make changes in your mood the way you can in his. His magic is to feel, not to affect. But he can pour all of his love into you, let you see how much he wants for your old guilt at leaving Gamzee to go away, surround you with himself and obscure everything else out. That he can do. That's what he does. 

And eventually, that washes the dream away. 

"Thank you," you tell him after a minute or two. 

Dave just hums and kisses you, thinking a wordless _I love you_ at you. 

You murmur it back, and settle next to him, relaxing and letting yourself start to fall back asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> welp now the title makes less sense but makes me happy.


End file.
